Almost Famous

Monday we climbed the “incense burner” (557 metres above sea level) and at the top, first a solitary guy and later an excited group of students asked if they could have their photos taken with me. One of the males of the group commented that I looked like David Beckham (I don’t remember the glasses and earrings phase either).

Tuesday we headed in the same approximate direction to Yuanmingyuan to see the ruins of the Imperial Palace an Anglo-French force destroyed in 1860. Again I was invited to be in a couple of photos. Later, we met up with a friend from London, Maria, who planned this coincidental trip last year and we met her brother and a couple of her cousins, one of whom is David Lee, a Hong Kong movie and TV star. At the restaurant where we ate they got out the camera and took his picture and requested an autograph, then inexplicably asked me to sign too (later I wished I’d signed Tony Blair). At the bar of the five star hotel we went to later, people stopped talking and pointed (not for me anymore) and one awestruck girl came over just to say hello. Jun was pretty starstruck too.
A text from Joss indicated that Richard Lee is making a bit of a name for himself as a penalty saver, performing the feat again tonight as Watford squandered a 2-0 half-time lead to draw 2-2 at home to Cardiff. JJ and Hoskins scored but Priskin got himself sent off (again) and we were apparently under the cosh from then till the end.

First Impressions of a Future

Towards the end of the eight-hour BA flight (with movies on demand and tasty veggie meals), we flew over hundreds of miles of chocolate-coloured mountains, which seemed from above like a combination of millions of toblerone and a vast crumpled blanket. Breathtaking. We had a very short carousel wait for the packs we need and the cases of presents I lugged and were then out of the enormous Beijing terminal onto an equally outsized expressway to the city centre, replete with the obligatory “bad” drivers, including a police car straddling lanes as he spoke on his mobile. Before we reached the forest of fluted high rises, toasting rapid growth, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of greenery lining both airport transit tracks and the Olympic-sign-blazoned route to the heart of the world’s economic beast, even spying a mountain-biking group in full lycra get-up between the trees.

Not long after I spotted my first foreigner (also cycling), we were at “Convenient Hotel” waiting for our room (we got there before check-out time and the place was busy, as an angry rant from a turned-away almost-guest attested). I decided to wander down a smaller road and passed two street/communal toilets (many homes didn’t/still don’t have their own) before settling on a likely place for a haircut. As I smiled at the hairdresser, she offered “massa massa” but I gestured that I wanted my head shaved. This was gigglingly achieved and then the offer of a massage re-emerged as hands stroked my groin, lips were flexed and I was shown a bed behind a curtain. “Ni bai” (200) was the price but my refusal lead to a halving. Excuses were made but not understood and I got away with nothing more than a blush and an overpriced cut (about £2.50).

After a rest when the room became available, we ate tofu, noodles, mushrooms, spinach and slices of an unidentified root vegetable from an enormous hotpot bowl and I washed it down with Yanjing beer from the bottle, forgoing the use of the shrink-wrapped crockery. Then we taxied it to a bar area near a lake that translates as “back sea”, joined in ti zhenzu (keepy-uppie with a coloured and weighted shuttlecock) and people-watched in a few locations. One of the main points of discussion was the changes that have led to the sort of prices some of the places could charge and Jun put it down to the number of foreigners and the endemic corruption. With absolutely no evidence, I was inclined to believe that at least some of the young locals we saw enjoying their Saturday night had legitimately earned large amounts in the boom this country has enjoyed.

We got back and our forty-hour day was iced with the news that Watford had won their first away match of the season, 3-0 at Southampton. Tamas Priskin scored two and Richard Lee made a penalty-save double. Result!

Another year of the Championship

Hull City v Watford

Wednesday 14^th May

I arrived at work to find all systems down and classes cancelled as a consequence. The guy who bid me leave said I’d be able to watch the Rangers game but I corrected him. Jun and I went to a pub near Mornington Crescent that I’d phoned to check would show it having been turned away from the local earlier. It was a dream start for us. After eleven minutes, good work by Jobi McAnuff led to Darius Henderson pulling off a one-two with Nathan Ellington in the box and slotting us in front. We stayed on the front foot and dominated without really looking like adding to the total until a couple of minutes before half-time when a Hull cross that didn’t look dangerous saw Richard Lee stranded and a ridiculously high header go over him and in.

We never looked like we’d score again after the break and with half an hour left Betty gambled by bringing on striker Tamas Priskin and taking off defender Adrian Mariappa, who’d made a terrible back pass in the first half and had been lucky not to give away a penalty in the second. The Hungarian smashed another shot at the keeper soon after coming on (as he had Sunday) but crossing the ball would probably have meant a goal. Hull took off Windass and brought on Folan, who made an immediate impact. It was downhill from there. They scored a second, meaning we needed three more (haven’t scored four all season), and in the final two minutes they added two more. The fans invaded the pitch twice and Mexican waves rocked the KC stadium. 6-1 on aggregate and yet we played better passing football than I’ve seen us do for ages. We need strikers, a midfielder, a right back and perhaps a keeper. As for the manager, that debate will rage but I’m prepared to stand by him if the dressing room are.

Same difference

Watford v Hull City

Sunday 11^th May

Our play-off semi-final first leg was full of incident and we actually played pretty well. With a Danny Shittu header disallowed after only five minutes, the boisterous Yellow Army might have been forgiven for thinking we’d score at home at last but with Nathan Ellington anonymous throughout, it was left for Jobi McAnuff to have the best (missed) chances with Tamas Priskin forcing a good save from their keeper and man-of-the-match, Myhill. However, way before the Hungarian impressed, we’d let in two early goals. The first derived from a mistake by centre-back Danny Shittu, who clashed into Mat Sadler out in the left-back’s position, leaving their winger to cross for a shot from Nick Barmby to slip under keeper Richard Lee. Fifteen minutes later after another scramble, Lee was unable to get up quick enough to stop a header from Dean “who ate all the pies” Windass.

The fans stayed behind the team for once and willed a goal before half-time that didn’t come. We started the second half in blistering form but that goal didn’t come and then our captain, John Eustace, got himself sent off for the second time in a couple of months and although we remained the better team, our chances of reducing the deficit ahead of Wednesday slipped by.

A point won

West Bromwich Albion v Watford

Saturday 12^th April

Jun, Joss and I visited the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and took in some Rodin and Canaletto to use up the extra hours we had arriving for a 3 o’clock kick off when Sky had obliged a 5.20 start. We ate and watched a little rugby in a Wetherspoons and then left Jun in the town centre to catch a tram from Snow Hill. A few other Watford boys were on the platform but I talked to a Baggies fan as we disembarked at the Hawthorns.

The start could not have been better: six minutes in and we were a goal to the good but as there was no stadium announcement it wasn’t until after the game that we discovered it was Leigh Bromby who’d poached his first Hornets goal following a corner. The team sat back somewhat after that and Jordan Stewart, Lloyd Doyley and Danny Shittu all made vital contributions to keeping us ahead at the break, which afforded the fans their first opportunity to sit. However, the home team levelled soon after half-time. One WBA free kick had gone over and another hit the crossbar in the first half but early in the second a third led to a headed goal and although we’d had other chances to score during the first forty-five it was West Brom who played the better football and looked most like getting a second in the rest of the match. Three or four great saves from man-of-the-match Richard Lee earned us a good point.

As most of us had no doubt expected a mauling after Wednesday, relief was probably the dominant feeling among the travelling Yellow Army and with Bristol City and Hull drawing in their games too, Stoke were the only top five side to get three points and they are top again. Watford remain in fifth and likely to enter the play-offs.

We met Jun and, due to a rail replacement service, caught a couple of buses to Bedworth via Coventry, where Brian and mum picked us up after eleven. Cups of tea and trifle finished off the day, but not before “Nanny and Grandad” received the Xmas presents we’ve been holding for more than a hundred days. Sunday we spent some time in the garden and went bowling, where the younger Watford Boy won two of the games before we trained it back home.

Are you watching?

Watford v Charlton Athletic

Saturday 19^th January

The news that Calum Davenport had come in on loan from West Ham was insufficient to quell doubts about our future after the week that saw Watford reject a four-and-a-half million pound bid for Marlon King, Aidy Boothroyd saying “We don’t need to sell”, before accepting a five-million pound bid, with the manager now saying “We are a selling club”.

It is the lack of ambition that is disturbing. We have sold “The King of Vicarage Road” to Fulham, currently second bottom of the Premiership with exactly the same number of points (15) that we had at the same stage (23 games) last season. Why would he want to go there? Ten or fifteen thousand more a week is the answer. Why would we want to sell him? Do we need the money? What happened to the ambition the club has been talking about? If promotion is worth £60 million, why wouldn’t we look at investing for that?

As we walked down Hagden Lane, Joss created a new version of an old favourite: “Ee, i, ee, i, ee, i, oh, down the football league we go. When we get relegation, this is what we sing, we sold Marlon, we sold Marlon, we sold Marlon King.” We got in with a few minutes to spare and sat a few rows back to stay out of the drizzle. Nathan Ellington, in the starting line-up, got a big round of applause as did the new loanee defender.

Davenport started well and looked a far better player than Matt Jackson but did make a small mistake in the middle of the first half. Twenty minutes later, though, he was stretchered from their six-yard box after a four-man collision. We clapped the prostrate figure off and Adrian Mariappa came on, necessitating a change around at the back. Four minutes of stoppage time saw Charlton go nearest to scoring but it was goalless at half-time.

Tommy Smith was our man of the match, running at and passing his man time after time but Damien Francis had looked closest to scoring in the first half. In the second, he dummied a Darius Henderson ball, allowing the Duke to pass the ball into the net in front of us. Things might just be OK after all. The back row sang “Are you watching Marlon King?” and “Fulham are going down” and even added the line “We hate Marlon King” to the “ee, i,” song, which, considering the number of members of staff leaving the club recently, was a bit harsh.

But it was not to be three points. Richard Lee, who’d already made one great stop and made another with five minutes to go, somehow mistimed a dive and allowed the ball to bounce through him and in for a Charlton point. They even threatened to score again but I think honours-even was a fair result.

Bang, bang, bang

Watford v Plymouth Argyle

Saturday 15^th December

Today’s Guardian Weekend featured “the first celebrity asylum-seeker” and there were Al Bangura chants even outside the stadium; inside, each Rookery seat had a picture of the Sierra Leonean for us to hold up at half-time. With Lionel Ainsworth (on loan from Hereford) making his first start, Matt Jackson his second league start and Tamas Priskin in for Darius Henderson again, this was a different team from the last outing at the Vic.

Ainsworth was quality today, running at defenders like Adam Johnson was so recently in a yellow shirt (though some of his crosses could’ve been better) but Jackson was off the pace and Priskin ineffective. On top of that, Marlon was no “King of Vicarage Road” today, seeming to be unwilling to move for any ball that wasn’t played to his feet.

Truth is, the naysayers on the Watford Observer site seem to be more accurate than my “glass half full” outlook but it won’t stop me arguing about the merits of “supporting” the team. We lost at the death again today. But for our man of the match, goalkeeper Richard Lee, we would have gone down earlier. It was another fair result and after four home defeats in five games, we are finally off the top.

Life is just a game

Watford v Gillingham (Carling Cup 1^st Round)

Tuesday 14^th August

When I bought the tickets on ebay, I didn’t think that Watford might be playing the same evening and so it was that Prince came first. This time I went with Julie. Prince has said that it will be a different show each night and began with 1999, which got the evening off to a more upbeat start than Saturday. The set was better too, with longer guitar solos that left Julie wanting to come back.

We went to the after-show party at Indigo2 and the purple one turned up about 1 and jammed and played some more of his tracks. We danced near the front for a couple of hours and left satiated about half four. It was only the following afternoon that I found out Watford had changed ten men in their starting line-up (Tamas Priskin remained from Saturday) and cruised 3-0 past Gillingham with Priskin, Douglas Rinaldi and Alex Campana scoring and Richard Lee saving a penalty at 0-0.